📝 Why Best Practices Are Important
NetSuite’s reporting tools (Saved Searches, Reports, Dashboards, SuiteAnalytics) are powerful, but without best practices, companies often face:
- Slow performance and timeouts.
- Duplicate or conflicting reports.
- Confusion over “which report is correct.”
- Governance issues from heavy searches powering scripts.
By following these best practices, you’ll ensure reporting is accurate, consistent, and scalable.
✅ Checklist of Best Practices
1. Saved Searches
- Always add filters (date, status, subsidiary, department).
- Use summary types (SUM, COUNT, AVG) instead of line-level results where possible.
- Limit the number of columns to only what users need.
- Reuse formulas via custom fields instead of repeating in searches.
- Name searches consistently → e.g., FIN – AR Aging, SALES – Pipeline by Rep.
2. Reports
- Clone standard reports instead of editing them.
- Align financial reports with your chart of accounts.
- Add calculated formulas for KPIs like Gross Margin % or Year-over-Year growth.
- Use filters by department, class, or subsidiary for multi-entity reporting.
- Test reports with finance before distributing widely.
3. Dashboards & KPIs
- Build role-based dashboards (CFO, Sales Manager, Operations).
- Keep dashboards clean → focus on 4–5 portlets per role.
- Use a mix of standard KPIs and custom search-based KPIs.
- Add reminders for tasks (e.g., “Invoices Overdue > 30 Days”).
- Refresh saved searches powering dashboards on a schedule to avoid lag.
4. SuiteAnalytics Workbooks
- Start with focused datasets (don’t pull everything).
- Use pivot tables for comparisons and charts for visualization.
- Build department-specific workbooks (Finance Workbook, Sales Workbook).
- Share workbooks by role to ensure security.
- Avoid overloading dashboards with too many charts.
5. Performance Optimization
- Schedule large searches/reports to run off-peak hours.
- Avoid emailing massive result sets — filter or summarize instead.
- Regularly clean up unused saved searches and reports.
- Use SuiteAnalytics Connect for heavy BI analysis instead of saved searches.
6. Governance & Security
- Assign reporting access based on roles (not all users need financial data).
- Document ownership of critical reports (who maintains it?).
- Use audit trails to track changes to critical financial reports.
- Standardize reporting → define “one source of truth” for KPIs.
✅ Real-World Example of Best Practice
Problem: Sales and Finance teams each built their own “Revenue Report,” showing different numbers.
Solution:
- Finance created a master revenue report (Income Statement).
- Sales created a pipeline report (Saved Search).
- Both were added to dashboards with clear labels: Revenue (Finance), Pipeline (Sales).
- Now everyone uses the same reports with no confusion.
📌 Key Takeaways
- Always use filters, summaries, and formulas wisely.
- Keep dashboards and reports role-specific and clean.
- Reuse optimized searches instead of duplicating logic.
- Schedule large reports during off-peak hours.
- Standardize and document reports → avoid multiple versions of the truth.
Leave a Reply